By Jonathan Lynn

GENEVA, Nov 3 (Reuters) - Talks to tighten rules on cluster bombs that resumed in Geneva on Monday are simply a distraction from a separate treaty to ban the weapons entirely that is being boycotted by major powers, campaigners said.

Over 100 countries agreed in May to ban cluster munitions -- which campaigners say have killed or maimed tens of thousands of civilians -- and are due to sign a treaty in Oslo next month.

But major producers or users of cluster munitions, including the United States, Russia, China, India, Brazil and Israel, oppose banning the weapons and have not adopted that agreement.

Stephen Mathias, who heads the U.S. delegation to the Geneva talks on updating a 1981 convention on exceptionally dangerous conventional weapons (CCW), said countries had fundamentally different views on cluster munitions.

"The goal has been to produce a text that will have real humanitarian benefits but that will also attract the support of those countries that believe that cluster munitions are legitimate weapons that are important to their national security interests," he told the opening session of the talks.

The weapons, extensively used in the Vietnam war, can spread up to hundreds of bomblets over a target area. Many of these fail to explode immediately, posing a threat to civilians for many years after a conflict.

Mathias said he hoped the Geneva talks on updating the conventional weapons convention could be concluded this week, even though many countries, including the United States, would want changes to the proposals before them, according to a text of his remarks distributed by the U.S. mission.

"It looks much more like what's happening in the CCW is not an attempt to deal with cluster munitions but it's an attempt to deal with the bad publicity that one gets by not being part of the Oslo process," said Steve Goose of Human Rights Watch.

"It is totally inconceivable that they will agree to anything that would make a real humanitarian difference in terms of coping with the problems caused by cluster munitions," Goose told a news conference.

MORAL PRESSURE

The proposals under discussion would give countries 13 to 20 years to phase out some cluster munitions, while allowing them to use, produce, stockpile and trade the rest, he said.

Thomas Nash, cluster munition coalition coordinator, said around half the past users and producers of cluster munitions and almost half those stockpiling the weapons were expected to sign the Oslo treaty on Dec. 3.

Goose said the Oslo treaty could be effective even without the participation of major powers because of the moral pressure it would exert, just as countries that had not signed a similar treaty banning landmines were no longer using them.

"Even those states who stay outside the treaty have to bend to the new standard of behaviour that is being established internationally," he said.

He said both Russia and Georgia had used cluster munitions in their conflict in August, but Russia was denying it had used them because of the stigma already associated with them.

Lynn Bradach, an American woman whose son Travis was killed by a U.S. cluster munition while serving in Iraq, said she hoped Washington would follow the example of countries signing the Oslo treaty.

"We cannot give the child back their arms, their legs or their lives, we cannot give a parent back their child, but we can prevent more of this tragedy from happening," she said. (Editing by Tim Pearce)

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